For some reason I couldn't sleep last night, so I was tossing and turning unil 4 or 5 in the morning. I was thinking (while I was unable to sleep) about how, when I was young, I was a very restless sleeper and would rip the bed apart and sometimes wind up facing the opposite direction* to that I had started out in. I wore pajamas as a small child (and put the bottoms on my head and hopped around claiming to be a rabbit), then later having teh dreaded nightgowns. Standing out in my memory are some embroidered mid-length nighties that were very pretty if you like embroidered things. Maybe they came from my mother's mother, Mummy Barbara, in Hong Kong - I have a vague feeling that they might've. Anyway, I was so restless a sleeper that nighties would wind up around my neck strangling me. I'd've been better off with spray-on insulation or Gertrude Ederle-style grease, I think. Or maybe I should just've taped the nighties to my knees.

Anyway, then I started thinking about the old 8's and super8's I have on tape that were taken by my Uncle Tony (WSAFTN***) and my sister Deborah. Some of them are quite old, and in on segment I'm about 5 and my cousin and I are going to bed. I'm bouncing up and down kissing my cousin good night and settling in, all documented for posterity by my uncle.

When I got up I dragged through a billion discs looking for the movies, and through another billion Hi-8 tapes. I did find the VHS tape. Too bad - I'd hoped for an easier way to get access to the thing. I realised I'd just (in the past week) chucked out two video-editing programs and blithely tossed the husks (folders) as well - and I know damn well that the video was in those folders as I was making something when I just... stopped.

Anyway, I hope I can dredge the snippet up out of the VHS... I'm back. Wow, that was weird - the whole thing didn't even look familiar - hooking up my video camera to the TV (which has been unplugged for years). Plugging in the TV and VCR took ages as the electrizzities in this house (in this case the sockets, actually) is so crappy that I have to wiggle and/or bend the plugs to get them to conduct anything. Anyway, I sorted it, and it yielded THIS! Something no one in their right mind would be interested in seeing!

Going to Bed in 1959



* Longitudinally, and not as someone thought, just rolling over and facing the other way. That annoyed me, that a person** though I thought rolling over in bed was being a restless sleeper.
**Who shall NOT be named as I can't remember who it was.
***Who skied away from the Nazis.